


Summer Graves

by Victorian_Asylum



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, adaar is kind of a mess, not the most healthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 12:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3133877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Victorian_Asylum/pseuds/Victorian_Asylum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You never really knew what was good for you anyways. // Hero/Inquisitor</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer Graves

**Author's Note:**

> I've fallen into second person POV hell and I can't get up.
> 
> Also, I don't really know how this story came to be. It was supposed to be about 2,000 words shorter, but here we are.

You appear to have a knack for surprising things. Usurping mysterious power from a corrupted Tevinter magister, coming the lead the burgeoning Inquisition, and bedding the Hero of Ferelden.

When she first arrives, you are more than a little starstruck, a walking legend strolling into the keep, but Maker, does she fit right in. She falls back into her old friends, laughing with Leliana over past exploits, and drawing surprising smiles from the usually stoic Morrigan. She blends in with all the others as if she's always been there, joking and jostling, and even Cassandra, who appeared as if she might faint upon first seeing the living legend, reacts to her as if she were a sister. She knows what to say and who to say it to, how to simply be.

She hardly comes up to your navel, and yet her presence reaches the heavens. So unlike you, too big, too rough. Always trying to compact yourself to better fit inside your situations. You never had a problem with your race, until people expected something of you, and you found yourself unsure of how you were supposed to compact yourself. She is everything to you wish to be, a natural leader, persuasive with her words and perfectly charming. But you do not understand what she wants with you. The Hero was a dwarf, forced to the surface, and doomed to destroy her family. Redemption came in the form of heroism, or at least, that's what people believed. You, on the other hand, were never anything special. An accident strung magic through your hand, otherwise, you would not be here.

Aeducan lay upon your bed, chest an even rise and fall as the cool air dries the sweat upon her skin. She seems too big to be wholly real, too great and too beautiful, because you always feel gangly around her, a mess of freckles, callouses and awkward scars and you wonder how you two ended up fucking. What does she see in you? She is graceful and poetic, inspiring. She is an inspired leader, saved the world once before. You are just a clusterfuck of poor decisions, mediocre leadership and accidents. You've stumbled through your role as de facto leader, trying to follow your heart but finding that good intentions get people killed, and you were never meant for this. Mercenary work suited you just fine, small groups you could handle. If anyone died, it was their own damn fault, not following your orders. But this is too big, even for you. Why couldn't Aeducan have been at the Conclave? She knew how to lead. She was exactly what the world needed. And instead, it got you.

You push a sigh through your teeth, you don't want to think about this. Whining won't remove the mark on your hand. You've been given a near impossible learning curve, and ultimatum. You either become the leader the world needs, or everything will die. “You really have a way with people,” you say instead. “I didn't know Morrigan was capable of smiling.”

Aeducan laughs at that, a pleasant sound that vibrates against the fingers you have resting against her clavicle. “Ten years ago, that would have been a miracle if you'd known her. She's mellowed out considerably, lost her rough edges. Her son has worked wonders.” She pauses then, and you feel her heartbeat, a sturdy thing that pumps royal, heroic blood, once tainted. “I owe that boy my life.”

That catches you off guard and you turn on your side, looking at the compact woman, dark skin glowing the in the light of the sunrise, illuminating her scars. “How?” You knew that boy had some strange magic about him, he was certainly special, but he was still a child.

Aeducan turns her head to look at you, eyes as old as time, and for once she looks exactly like what she's been through. Not a Paragon, not a Hero, not a princess. Just a warrior. Her eyes hold wounded remorse. “Through selfishness. I didn't want to die, and I didn't want anyone else to die striking the blow against the Archdemon. It was always going to be me. Morrigan offered a way out, and I jumped on the chance like a fucking coward, pulled so many people in just to save myself.”

You swallow at the rawness in her voice, like hot knives. This has roiled like infection within for ten years. “Her son was your way out?” You cannot being to wrap your head around how such a thing would work, and you won't ask.

“Yes.” A release of breath. “That's what I admire about you. You're selfless. You didn't hesitate when they told you you were needed to seal the Breach, even though it could kill you.”

No, you weren't selfless by nature, you just don't value your life. You would throw it away for a good cause if something beautiful could come of it. “That wasn't selflessness, I was dead either way. If I failed, I'd have been sent to Val Royeux and executed.”

“Then what about Haven? You stayed behind to face certain death to cover everyone's escape and stop the enemy. Was that not selflessness? Or when you took that arrow for Solas? How about all those people you go out of your way to help even though they don't contribute to the Inquisition as a whole?”

All this praise steeped on you is warming your blood, especially coming from someone you hold in such esteem. “That's just- that's just... me.”

“Exactly. You are naturally selfless. I wish I could have been like that, all those years ago.”

“If you had, you'd be dead.”

Her pulse spikes beneath your touch, the heart of a woman who has seen too many battles, too many wounds, beating with blood like gold, a patchwork of lost friends, old relationships and regrets. It hasn't been any easy life for her, but she's lived it the only way she knew how, and Maker, did she turn out alright. Conversations crumble after that, and Aeducan eventually buckles her armor and leaves you alone in your bed with the rising sun as company.

.

.

.

Aeducan is something of a fable, and her being with the Inquisition works wonders for your notoriety. People are inspired when they see a living legend down in the dirt, made human and attainable, something you could never hope to achieve, the way she glides from person to person, exactly who they need, all smiles and quick wit. No one notices when she slips away to your bedroom, not with the presence she leaves behind. You assume nobody notices the precarious situation you've found yourself in, but you should know better. Leliana is dangerously perceptive, especially in regards to those she cherishes.

So you find yourself in the rookery, seated across from Leliana, foot tapping against the floor. It's always you who visits her, not her calling you up. You like her, with her sharp tongue and wisdom, that spark of passion that permeates everything she does. She didn't sugarcoat, but her blunt words belie her earnest heart. She is a cherished ally, perhaps even friend, and she knows. That is why she called you here.

“I see you've gotten quite close with the Hero,” Leliana begins, no mincing of words, always to the point.

“She's a remarkable woman,” you say, cracking your knuckles anxiously. Leliana surely takes note. 

“She certainly is. So what, exactly, are you to her?”

There was no sense in lying, playing dumb, because she knows everything. So you shrug your shoulders, and answer. “I don't know. Fuck buddy I suppose. I think I'm just convenient.”

Leliana studies you with a bard's eyes, carefully, purposefully, seeing through and within you. Your answer is the truth, and surely what she suspected, but not what she hoped. “She is one of my closest friends, as you know.” Leliana says. “And she has been through more than you could know. If this arrangement-”

“I understand, Leliana. Don't break her heart, if feelings get tangled in this.”

Leliana purses her lips, crosses her arms. “The same applies to you, Inquisitor. We need you to be fully focused on your tasks. I do not know what this is to her, in all the time I've known her she has never had a meaningful, lasting relationship. If this has the potential to hurt you, drop it.”

.

.

.

Aeducan looks right at home upon your bed, swallowed up by too big sheets and too many pillows, flickering lamplight casting shadows across her aristocratic features. You sit on the edge, watching the flames in the fireplace licking their way up the logs. Leliana's warning still rings in your head, and you fret over them once a day, but it wasn't enough to give you pause when Aeducan came siddling up to you, all confidence and charm. You have to wonder to yourself, when did 'The Hero' become 'Aeducan'? How did her name come to roll so easily, so naturally from your tongue. You still can only claim small pieces of knowledge in regards to her.

“I heard the Champion was here, not too long ago.”

“She was,” you answer absently. It doesn't seem real, how so many fables walk right into your life as if they belonged there, as if they were as familiar as your scars. “Only briefly, because she'd fought Corypheus before, and had some knowledge as to why the Wardens were acting so strangely. I think she was afraid that if she stayed, they'd try to shove my job onto her.”

Aeducan laughs at that, rich like honey, the kind of laugh you believe enchants people to her. “If the stories I've heard of her have any truth, we'd all be doomed.”

“She seems to have matured since Kirkwall,” you say. You liked Hawke, her easy humor, always talking as if her words were a shrug, shifting meaning, just noise to fill and bring laughter. “The way Varric talks of her personality back then, it's a wonder she's still alive.”

“I knew the mage who blew up the Chantry, her friend Anders.”

“Did you really?” That was news. You knew he'd been a Grey Warden, but ran. That was all.

“Yes. I was Warden-Commander and encountered him when darkspawn infested our keep. I chose to induct him into the Wardens, invoked the right of conscription to prevent Templars from taking him. He was different then. We traveled together, I gifted him a cat, everything was as good as it could be in such a situation. Then we stopped the threat, everyone went their own way, and he ended up with the Champion.”

Everyone's fate seemed to intersect. Every important piece of the puzzle had once connected to another. You wonder if it was a necessity for the next hero, to have ties to the past, whether it be friends or experiences. A lot of your associates have memories of Aeducan. She influenced much of your life long before she'd ever trailed kisses along your thighs. “Do you ever wonder if you could have stopped it, before it ever began?”

“No. Whatever happened, happened long after we parted ways. I've many regrets, but Anders is not one of them.”

So cavalier. Thick callouses to hide tender wounds, grown as necessary to combat the growing pains. What will your legacy to the next great hero be? That you fucked the Hero of Ferelden, and shared meaningless back and forth by way of pillow talk? You suppose you may be the last hero, at least of this age. A blight, rampaging Qunari, war and rebellion and a monster clawing for godhood. Everything built upon the other, as if trying to outdo each other. There was nothing that could be thrown at Thedas that would surprise them. So perhaps you will not have to council the next freshfaced last hope. You will fade into the history books like all the rest, where your mistakes will be forgotten, and your actions glorified. “So what are you going to do now?” You change the subject so abruptly it's obvious. “Are you going to stay?”

You can hear the shrug in her voice, when she says, “I don't know. The world doesn't need me anymore.”

“Have you thought of returning to Orzammar?”

“No.” The answer is swift, cracks like a switch over knuckles. You resist the urge to flinch. Aeducan's voices softens then, soothes. “That place is ruined for me now. There is nothing left.” She exhales softly, contemplating her words. “It's been nice to see familiar faces, but you don't need me here. I suppose I'll move on soon.”

You know this is the point where you're supposed to turn around, look at her, at her molten gold eyes. Say something witty or profound, light, nothing that'll stick to the inside of your ribs. But if you do, she will see reflected in your eyes, as clear as a summer night sky, a simple truth.

You want her to stay.

.

.

.

It's a few hours from dawn and Aeducan's fingers are threaded through your own, thumb brushing almost reverently over your scarred knuckles. It's the first time she ever came to your room for anything other than simple pleasures. This right here? Pressed against your side, legs tangled beneath silk sheets, watching twined hands in fire light? She could find this with any number of people at Skyhold. You try not to think of the implications.

You discuss the events of the Fade with her. She tells of her own exploits within the Fade, it being one of her worst experiences. You laugh at that. She seems rather curious about the fear demon in particular, the way it tried to dissect everyone's minds, forcefeed them their worst fears. You let slip that the demon did not torment you, which prompts Aeducan to ask, rather tenderly, without pressure, “What is your worst fear? What would that demon have used against you?”

“You first,” you say, too quickly, voice breaking only a little as you force yourself to be nonchalant. Your heart spikes and you swallow. You don't want to admit any of this, but, at the same time, if there is anyone you would utter these things to, it would be Aeducan.

She smiles at that, a crooked little thing that stretched the scar on her cheek. “I suppose that is only fair. My greatest fear, for the longest time, was dying. Dying for something, dying for nothing. It still is, in the recesses of my mind, but I've grown some. Learned. I also deeply fear failure. Having to hold up the world for so many, you quickly learn that failure kills everyone.”

Your hand is shaking in your nervousness, and Aeducan brings it closer, brushing her lips across the veins atop your hand. You shiver at the contact. But you bite the sword, and perhaps also your tongue, and answer. “Being outgrown. I'm afraid that I'm just going to be discarded. That... everyone around learns and grows and matures and I'm just stunted. Me. I don't change like I am supposed to, don't grow anew, and everyone else moves on without me. And I'm left, barely functional in the new world, alone. Forgotten.” Because really, without the mark, you're useless. You were never meant to lead all of Thedas. You were never meant for this.

“Oh, Salem,” she breathes, the sound of your name startling. It has been many, many years since you last heard those syllables. It was always some title, a nickname, your last name. The use of your first is so intimate it's unbearable. 

Leliana's warning appears to have come too late. You are hopelessly entangled in whatever this is. There will be no dropping it. 

Selfless, huh?

Does getting your heart broken count as taking one for the team?

.

.

.

The desk is warm beneath you, varnish smooth against your skin. The wooden thing is sturdy, thick, big, but it was never meant to hold the weight of qunari and a dwarf, and groans like the wind with any movement. Your horns scrape uncomfortably against the table, but you cannot move your head, and you are forced to meet Aeducan's rich eyes. She sits upon your hips, fingers splayed just beneath your ribs, over a recently healed scar where a dragon quit literally had your guts spilling. It's still sensitive, and makes your stomach turn just remembering it. Aeducan watches you, all of you, in the candelight. Leliana once said you wear your heart on your sleeve, emotions bared for all to see. She said it made you real, relatable, but would inevitably get you killed. You think she is not entirely right. Your heart is in your eyes, where everyone can reach right in and strum the strings of your heart, hear the discordant music it plays. You were always a terrible liar.

You fear she can see the question in your eyes, perceptive as she is, so you say it, let the words cut through the air. “Why me?”

Aeducan regards you curiously, tilts her head ever so slightly, lips parted for clarification, but you rush in, “You could have this- whatever it is- with anyone else. But you chose me. I'm just-” A mess. Too tall. Too big. Too scarred. Too scared. Too wrong for this. “Why?”

Aeducan sighs, as if she was expecting this question. Her fingers press reflexively into your skin, cold, always cold. “Because you understand.” She says, all earnest eyes, raw and open, unlike anything you've seen before. She is beautiful then, solid and real and somehow here, with you, when the world is ready to fall on your head. You want to kiss her then, but her words are vital, to you and her, so you set your too big hands on her hips, thumbs brushing over bone, and wait as Aeducan continues, “You know what it is like to be the only person who can save everyone. How your actions sway people and nations, mean the difference between life and death. Failure destroys everything. The other people here, they know the stakes, but they do not know what it's like to be at the top. To be the savior or destroyer of everything. All that pressure... it is rare to find someone who knows such stress. Who's been kept awake at night reliving earth shattering, split second decisions that were forced upon them.”

Aeducan draws in a breath, and her eyes, which have been slowly burning in the dim light, cool, extinguished, and she briefly turns her searing gaze out the windows and over the glowing mountains. She smiles lightly, almost bashfully. “Above all, I suppose, I felt a pull. Drawn to you, specifically. My apologies. You deserved to know sooner. I never even asked you if you wanted this.” She turns her once pooling eyes, now solidified, back to you, asking, searching for your answer.

“If I didn't want it, I would have said no,” you say. “It's just- what is this to you?” The words tumble out before you stop them, suspended.

A beat. Then, confident, smooth, “Whatever you want it to be.”

“That doesn't work. It's too evasive. I need to know. I need to know, because,” here you breath, quickly, tight, take the plunge, “I love you. And if you are going to break my heart, I need to prepare.”

Aeducan looks startled. You wonder how many times she's heard those words. Her cold fingers flex against your stomach. “I don't- I never-” Speechless, flustered. It might have been amusing, were the situation not the way it is. “I never intended to break your heart.”

Then don't leave, you think. She knows everything about you, you've confided secrets and fears and deep seeded selfloathing in her. There was not a part of you, physically or mentally, that was left untouched. No body else in all of Thedas could claim as much. But if you tell her that, you will guilt her into saying something just to appease you. If she is going to stay, you wish it to be on her own wishing. So you swallow everything, trap it behind your teeth, seal it like you are so good at doing, and say, “I know.”

And everything concaves.

.

.

.

When you awake sometime before the sun rises, you know.

The bed feels big now, empty despite lavish adornments. Somehow Aeducan seemed to fill your luxurious room with just her presence. Now you feel the cold of the mountains, and pull the blankets up over your body, having migrated during the night to the bed. You really can't help but fuck everything up, huh? Can't keep your damn mouth shut and just keep her here, somewhere within the walls of the keep, at least so she can talk and laugh with the people who need her. Who deserved more. You connect with someone, feel close to them in body and soul. And then you doom them, slap shackles upon their wrists. You sleep far into the day, not mad at Aeducan. No. You threw something very heavy on her, something she has never felt before. Something you imagine she didn't know what to do with, how to deal. You do not blame her. People have walked off with pieces of your heart before. You hope she takes proper care of it. It needs a little whiskey now and then.

You open your eyes to a setting sun that bathes your room in oranges and pinks, and sit up to find Leliana at your desk, turning over an unfamiliar dagger in her palm. She meets your gaze from across the way, eyes dark, unknown. “She's gone, you know. Slipped out sometime before dawn.”

“I know.” You feel it in your bones, like rot, like splinters.

Leliana watches you, ceasing her movements. Quiet, contemplative. Perhaps wondering if she should have been firmer in her warning. If you are alright. Could she glean how invested you are in Aeducan just by looking at you, all ocean eyes and hard lines? You were hardly secretive. Half of Skyhold knew, whispering of it behind hands and fancy masks. The Herald was in love. No, the Herald was drowning, and Aeducan was more like the tide, pushing, pulling, dragging and swirling, consuming. They'll surely talk now. The Herald. Abandoned. You feel like laughing. As if you could truly make her stay. “I can have agents track her,” Leliana offers, after minutes pass, and you suspect you look more and more like crying. Over what, exactly? 

“No,” you refuse out of necessity, and for the sake of sanity. Bad is leaving, worse is returning, awkward strangers, rather like steel swords clashing. All sparks and flashes of danger, the risk of rebound and cuts. “We won't waste resources. Just let her go.”

Leliana sets the dagger down, crosses the expanse. She looks different in dying light. More at home, more human. She appears as if she is going to sit on the edge of the bed, but, no, that would be too motherly. Leliana does not sit. She perches, waiting, watching, calculating. “I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault.” You grab a ragged, discard shirt that is half hidden beneath your pillows and put it on over your torso. Your scars are your own now, for only you to see. “You warned me. I didn't listen. It's fine.”

Leliana is a master at sniffing out bullshit. A sixth sense. Yet she says nothing, accepting that nothing she says will change it. Despite being far from alright, you wish to be alone, to work through the events that lead up to now. And Leliana respects that. She passes a look over you one last time, says, “It was part of her heart,” and then she is gone, almost evaporating completely, as if she was never here to begin with. You push yourself out of bed, tread the cold path to your desk to find the dagger. You understand before you can even process it. It's a decorative, gilded thing, with a worn leather handle that seems to have been replaced multiple times. The pommel once held some ornate seal, but it had been carefully scratched off. A formerly royal seal of a family all but wiped out, now nothing. You test it against your finger. Still sharp enough to draw blood.

When you vanish from someones life, you withdraw completely. You do not leave gifts or signs that you ever even lived. That you had made a home. You don't need this. Part of her heart? Was this supposed to be sentimental? Give you part of her to try to fill what she took? “It doesn't fucking work that way.” You tell the air. You weren't supposed to fill yourself in with pieces of her. That's just narcissism on her part. As if you needed a piece of her. As if you weren't used to healing your own wounds and setting your own bones.

It should make you angry. You should just throw it off the balcony, or give it to Leliana or Morrigan or some one else that knew her. You should drop it, drop her, leave her and bury Aeducan like you need to. Are expected to.

But you don't. Somehow, the dagger finds it way onto your belt.

You never find her.


End file.
